


in darkness i leave for a place i've never seen

by catteo



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 07:44:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3126593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catteo/pseuds/catteo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An origin story of sorts.</p><p>
  <i>I am siren, I am ivy,<br/>I am no one, I'm nobody,<br/>I am longing for your honey,<br/>I am longing for your love...</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	in darkness i leave for a place i've never seen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [waltzmatildah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/gifts).



> _I am longing for your poison like a cancer for its prey_

Winter – Nine

The atmosphere inside the house is stifling and makes Katerina feel as though she’s stuck inside a skin that’s three sizes too small. The sharp, cloying, tang of pine smoke makes her nose itch and scratches down her throat with every shallow breath. There are strangers everywhere she turns, the air thick and heavy with the sounds of raucous laughter, suffocating in its intensity. Her every hiding place has been discovered and there’s a hollow ache in her gut, growing with every passing moment, an unfamiliar emotion. It feels like falling with nobody there to catch her.

 

With her mother closeted away, most of the women with her, Katerina feels as though she’s adrift in a foreign land. Terrifying strangers loom large in every darkened corner of the building and she twists and turns to avoid them, shrinks in on herself until she wonders if she’s even recognisable. Rooms fill with the shouts of half-drunk men, and she feels gazes linger on her slight frame longer than they should. Their eyes are dark, and their faces are painted with expressions that leave tendrils of fear curling up her spine; send her hurrying, eyes fixed on the ground, to the safety of the women’s quarters.

 

She’s young and naïve and, later, she supposes that it was her fault. That somehow she proved to be a temptation too strong to resist. Her father always told her that she would eventually be the downfall of them all and, as she struggles, pinned beneath solid muscle and bone, she feels the truth of his words in her very soul. She tries to scream as strong fingers claw their way inside her, breaching walls that she didn’t even know existed. A handkerchief is forced into her mouth, and she stills in an instant, some animal instinct telling her to stop fighting. Perhaps, if she submits, then this man will grow tired of his game and leave her to gather up the pieces of her fractured innocence. She feels stiff cotton at the back of her throat, nausea twisting in her gut, and it’s all she can do to remember to breathe.

 

 

Katerina squeezes her eyes closed -- 

 

 _tight, tight, tight_

 

\-- doing her best to ignore the tears that run, hot and swift, down her cheeks. She builds herself a castle. High walls covered in ivy. A moat that’s impassable. She makes the towers tall and smooth, no foothold for the enemy. She hides her gates behind brambles, with thorns that thirst for blood, and a latticework of fragile flesh and bone. She hears muffled screams, cries for help that will go forever unanswered, and she doesn’t even recognise her own voice. He shifts, then, and pain lances up inside her, exquisite searing white heat, breaking her forever into who she was and what she will become. 

 

After --

 

She pulls herself up with hands that are still clenched into fists, knuckles white with effort, and stands on unsteady feet. The world she sees is a different place, all muted shades of grey, but there’s a trail of bright crimson slipping along her thigh like a caress. The contrast is brutal. 

 

 

She holds her castle in her mind.

 

 

She’s nine years old and she’ll never be a child again.

 

In the weeks that follow, Katerina spends as much time as she can down at the lake. She slides across the frozen water, arms outstretched, dark curls billowing out behind her. She’s a dark swan, a fairy queen, a siren luring men to their death. Anything but the broken girl she fears that she’ll be for the rest of her life.

 

Sometimes the children from the local village arrive before her, groups of half-starved waifs, daring each other to venture further out on the ice. They scatter at her arrival and she tells herself that she doesn’t care. Katerina walks out to where the ice gets thin, hears it groaning in protest against even her slight frame. She makes herself stand there, still as a stone. Counts slowly to ten before turning and walking back to the bank, heart hammering erratically against her chest. 

 

It’s proof positive that she’ll always survive.

 

Tonight, Katerina wishes that she were still outside, playing in the sun’s dying rays, but there’s a blizzard raging and ice creeps across the windows. She scrapes a nail across the crystals that form on the glass, relishing the way that it retreats at her desire. She swears that she can hear screams above the howling of the wind. The sound is jarringly familiar and she huddles closer to the fire trying to thaw the chill in her bones. Katerina knots her fingers through the curled fur of her father’s deerhound and positions herself against his bulk. Her shield against the world.

 

Katerina has been told in no uncertain terms that her mother needs rest, but she’s never been one to play by the rules. Sometimes she wonders if that’s why she has secrets that she can never tell. She waits until the men start drunkenly toasting her father and the good health of the new baby before creeping up the stairs to her mother’s room. The door stands slightly ajar, flickering amber firelight almost beckoning her inside, but she waits until she’s sure that she hears the gentle rhythm of sleep before sliding through the gap on quiet feet. 

 

She has to stand on her toes to peek over the edge of the crib. Her fingers hook over the worn wood as she stares, fascinated, at the tiny child inside. Katerina wonders for a moment if her older brother ever felt this way, pulse quickening with an instinct that she can’t yet put a name to. She rubs a thumb along the bruise on her arm, tangible proof of her brother’s feelings, and decides that Alex probably isn’t related to her anyway. Katerina reaches a tentative arm towards her sister and smiles as a tiny fist grasps her finger. 

 

Blood recognises blood. 

 

Her father finds her there, hours later, curled up on the floor beside the crib, a slumbering guardian waiting to be roused.

Spring – Twelve

“Kat, catch me! Kat!” Teodora almost falls as she stumbles over her own small feet. Kat races up behind her sister, skirts gathered up loosely in one hand. Teodora lets out a high pitched squeal as Katerina finally catches up, grasps her sister around the waist, and swings her towards the sky. 

 

“Higher Kat! Faster!” Katerina obliges, shifting her grip so that she can spin around holding her sister’s hands. Teodora lifts her face to the sun and screams with delight.

 

“Katerina!” She freezes at the sound of her father’s voice, gently sets her sister down and pushes her towards the house.

 

“Go, Teddy. I’ll be there soon.” Her sister regards her solemnly from bright blue eyes, gentle sunlight sparking gold in her hair. Katerina gives what she hopes is a reassuring smile before turning to face her father.

 

“Papa.” She scuffs at the dirt with the toe of her shoe, settles her skirts around her, adjusting to the still-unfamiliar weight of them against her. Only a few weeks ago she was running barelegged through the grass in nothing but a loose smock. Then she woke one morning with the ghosts of childhood terror staining her thighs, and suddenly her childhood was over.

 

“Must we have this conversation again Katerina? Have I not made it clear that you are to behave as befits a young lady? You are not a child any longer.” His tone is gentle but Katerina feels the sting of the truth in his words even so. 

 

She wonders when she was last a child at all.

Summer – Fifteen

Katerina closes her eyes and lifts her face towards the sun, golden amber kissing her skin. There’s not even the hint of a breeze in the air and the day surrounds her, cradles her like thick, liquid molasses. The bitter scent of pine resin makes her nose itch and drags her mind back to a dark night, the salt-sharp smell of desire, and the image of a princess standing in castle ruins. Katerina swallows down the bitter gall of her past and forces the present to the fore. Heat chases the vestige of a chill from her bones and, above the lullaby of rowdy cicadas, she can just hear the sounds of childish laughter down by the river.

 

Matthias drags her skirts up to her waist, and she feels every part of her skin grow warmer under the intensity of his stare. She knows that if her father catches them then it’ll be the end of everything. But this is her time to be worshipped. She feels Matthias’ love for her in every move he makes. For the first time in years she closes her eyes and feels nothing but hope. Allows herself to think of a future in which she’s the queen of a castle of never-ending dreams.

 

Matthias’ hands are callused from his work, rough as they slide up smooth skin and the swell of her curves. She knows that they’re going too far, but the mingled scent of their shared desire is intoxicating, and she’s drunk on the promises he whispers along her naked flesh. He dismantles her carefully constructed walls with soft kisses and honeyed words. The ivy covering the towers she built as a child is nothing more than a foothold to his gentle assault. She welcomes it.

 

She blames herself for that.

 

For a time.

 

Matthias kisses a path up her thigh and Katerina pulls him closer. She wants this. Wants to know how it feels to welcome the touch of another’s skin. His fingers are sure and his mouth is hot, tongue circling her eager flesh. Katerina arches up into him as sparks build to a crescendo at the base of her spine. She chases her own release, but Matthias has become an expert in this game of theirs. She feels his smile against her cheek, tastes herself on his mouth. She answers the question in his eyes with a small nod, grateful for the fact that he offers her a choice. She pretends that it’s her first time. Matthias fills her, the stretch of pleasure almost dizzying, sense memory making her vision flash red for a bare second before she surfaces in the present. 

 

She goes back to the woods again and again that summer. Matthias is her one constant in a life that’s becoming more and more stifling. Men corner her in the hallways and shadows of the house. She’s beautiful, skin the colour of burnished copper and eyes that promise the world, and they notice. Faces full of lust track her every moment, and she finds herself ushering Teodora from the house on an ever more frequent basis, with a sense of growing dread. 

 

Her father finds them one evening in September, just as the sun is staining the sky in shades of rose and gold. Katerina lies on a bed of grass, long limbs tangled with Matthias’, tracing the dancing pattern of light across his skin. She begins the work of raising her castle from the ruins once again, and raises her face to the dying light as her father paints the world in shades of iron and rust. The future flutters, feather-light wings, under the hand she lays on her barely swollen belly.

 

Katerina’s screams split the night, and she feels as though she’s finally being torn into the scattered parts she’s tried her best to stitch together. She can see the image of lazy summer days and a boy’s gentle smile painted across her closed eyelids. Teodora is her one constant; a hand that grasps hers and anchors her to the present, away from the demons and ghosts of the past. With a final wrench the pain settles to a dull ache and Katerina opens her eyes to a new dawn. 

 

Her father steals her future and sends her out into the brutal world. 

 

She learns how to fight.

Autumn – Nineteen

Katerina is changed now, her beauty frozen in an eternal space between breaths. Her heart is no longer a slave to the desire of her flesh. This is her curse. She wrestles with her choice, but fear races around her body, a faint memory of blood and joy. She runs towards her history. Katerina smells the truth from miles away; smoke and ash twining about a core of bitter iron. She pauses for a moment, closes her eyes against memories that race unbidden through her mind.

 

Warm sun caressing her skin as her father swings her into the air.

 

The echo of childish laughter and the burn of icy air in her lungs.

 

A boy whose smile taught her to forget the past.

 

Blue eyes, blonde hair and a tiny hand held in hers.

 

Katerina breaks. Leaves her heart shattered in pieces on the grave of her past. After all, she learned long ago that blood recognises blood.


End file.
